"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Saturday, June 20, 2020

News Satire Roundup: June 14th-June 18th


Sunday, June 14
·       Recap of the Week – Black Lives Matter protests
o   COPS is “that show your dad falls asleep to”
o   I loved the note that Google Maps updated the location of a Christopher Columbus statue after protesters threw it in a lake – “Because, unlike Christopher Columbus himself, Google knows how to read a fucking map”
o   But despite tangible changes, John acknowledged that we still have a long way to go (cue Joe Biden still vowing to put more money into policing)
·       And Now This – C-SPAN callers talking about COVID-19
·       Main Story – Facial recognition
o   Tangentially tied to the protests, since there are concerns about police applying facial recognition software to pictures/videos of protesters to identify them
o   It’s why John’s phone won’t unlock until it sees his face, “or the face of any toucan!”
o   Man, that Russian app “Find Face” was horrifying – talk about a stalker’s playground! :shudder:
o   It’s so gross that the issues facial recognition software has with recognizing people of color have been brought up consistently, but no one seems to have any urgency about correcting that (let alone stop letting law enforcement use it until after it’s corrected)
o   John’s right – “White guy, no problem” is “the unofficial motto of history” Meanwhile, Black and Asian faces are 100 times more likely to be incorrectly matched than white male faces
o   Looking at a quote about how long Google held off on studying facial recognition due to privacy concerns/potential abuses, I appreciated John’s remark that it was deemed “too Pandora’s Boxy for Silicon Valley,” no small feat


Sunday, June 14
·       Main Story – The Cost of College
o   When COVID-19 hit and colleges closed, “In an instant, childhood bedrooms became dorms, moms became cafeteria workers, and Econ. 101 looked like The Brady Bunch fucked Don Lemon’s show” – and yet, most students aren’t getting any refunds on tuition or room and board
o   Hasan noted that “the downside of not having a degree is getting worse” – in addition to an increasing share of livable-wage jobs being reserved for college graduates, people without college degrees have a considerable higher rate of suicides and opioid deaths
o   Great line – “You’re not rewarded for getting a degree, it’s kind of expected. But you’re definitely penalized for not getting a degree”
o   Ballooning tuition and fees have been coupled with an increasing number of classes being led by adjunct professors and TAs who are paid far less than tenured professors and receive no benefits – as Hasan said later in the episode, “This isn’t the playbook of an academic institution. It’s the playbook of a corporate institution”
o   Great comment in response to police who roughed up a TA striking for better compensation – “Why are the police wearing riot gear? What is Ben gonna do, attack you with specific examples from the text?”
o   Harvard’s $40 billion endowment is worth more than the GDPs of half the world’s countries, or “more than the economies of the countries destroyed by its alumni”


Monday, June 15
·       Main Story – Rayshard Brooks shooting
o   Another Monday, another police killing – major props to Trevor for his always-honest, always-insightful commentary
o   I appreciate it that Trevor never ignores or downplays instances when the victim did break or may have broken the law – instead, he allows it to be, as he said, “messy and imperfect” while still emphasizing that the broken law was “a law not worth dying for”
o   Riding on the wave of the Defund the Police discussion, he said, “Why are armed police dealing with a man sleeping in his car?”
o   I really liked Trevor’s repeated emphasis on the fact that Brooks was drunk, asking how we can expect a drunk person to behave in a correct/logical manner and not instead count on the sober, trained police officers to handle the situation without escalating it
o   He addressed the perennial refrain, “If you didn’t do that, you would still be alive,” with the “ifs” ranging from “didn’t resist arrest” to “didn’t wear a hoodie” – “the common thread,” he noted, was, “If you weren’t Black, maybe you would still be alive”
·       Headlines – Supreme Court upholds LGBTQ workplace protections, Black Lives Matter protests, Trump’s upcoming Tulsa rally
o   Trevor noted Pride month’s inauspicious start, what with “J.K. Rowling [trying] to do what Voldemort couldn’t and destroy Harry Potter” with her insistence on spouting transphobic views
o   In response to the Trump administration eroding protections for trans people in the middle of a pandemic and protests against police brutality, Trevor simply asked, “How much hate does one person need?”
o   I loved Trevor’s response to Trump’s claim that holding a rally on Juneteenth would be “a celebration” – “Is this dude trying to gentrify Juneteenth?”
o   The aptest description I’ve ever heard for a Trump rally – “a boxing match between a man’s mouth and his brain”
·       Interview – Activist/author Stacey Abrams
o   Abrams did not mince words about how things have gone down with COVID-19 – “Essential workers were the people we weren’t protecting, but we demanded their obeisance to our neds anyway”
o   She warned against letting the current fire for change “dissipate,” succumbing to the “numbness” of the allowing “the system to continue the way it’s been designed”
o   In discussing the Georgia primary, Trevor observed that some Republican-heavy precincts suffered the same suppressive conditions that the Democrat-heavy Black and brown precincts did – Abrams responded, “When you break the machinery of democracy, you break it for everyone”
·       Interview – Musician Alicia Keys
o   As others have in recent weeks, Keys called systemic racism “the most major pandemic of all”
o   Trevor acknowledged that “part of the journey of being a Black person is living between two states, pain and joy,” and so they discussed both her new song about police violence and her upcoming “piano battle” against John Legend, which Trevor delightedly called “the most highbrow hood thing that I’ve ever heard of”

Tuesday, June 16
·     Headlines - Trump’s police-reform executive order, clash over a conquistador statue, progress for Band-Aids in multiple shades and access to Black beauty products
o   Good line – “Having a gun means giving every tense situation the potential to end in death.” Trevor then asked us to imagine being armed during a Monopoly game. “It’s gonna turn into a Tarantino movie!”
o   I loved Trevor using Ghostbusters as a metaphor for defunding the police, with the Ghostbusters as a special unit created for a problem that the police weren’t best-equipped to handle
o   I laughed at Trevor wondering who the armed militia were in New Mexico stanning a 16th-century conquistador – “Why can’t they be obsessed with Beyoncé like a normal person?”
o   Walmart has promised to stop keeping Black beauty products in locked cases – I loved, “Even Black hair products suffer from mass incarceration!”
·       Correspondent Piece (Jaboukie & Michael) – How white people can fight for racial justice
o   Given how white people are normally all over Black trends, Jaboukie couldn’t figure out why it took them so long to get behind Black Lives Matter
o   Jaboukie’s secret weapon to get Michael to move beyond performative symbols and really drive action for change? Telling him that the police kill hundreds of dogs every year
·       Interview – Sen. Tim Scott
o   I appreciated Trevor bringing up the fact that Scott, the one Black Senate Republican, has been called a token for drafting a police-reform bill. I mean, this is a Republican bill – who would people have rather seen writing it, Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell?
o   Scott discussed sharing personal experiences with party members to try and get them to see the importance of the issue, along with the experiences of other powerful Black men in positions of authority – his list included “Black heads of police departments [pulled over] by their own departments!”
·       Interview – Actress Gabrielle Union
o   Union talked about the “nonstop onslaught of trauma” of always hearing news about yet another Black person being murdered by the police – she admitted that she wasn’t sure whether “depression” or “anxiety” were “big enough word[s]” to encompass how that felt
o   She went into her experiences on America’s Got Talent a lot and the racism she was subjected to there – I really liked what she said about people’s tendency of “going along to get along, trying to figure out how to get around those bad apples” rather than actually confronting their behavior and trying to do something about it

Wednesday, June 17
·       Headlines – Aunt Jemima brand retired, new shortcut for phones to auto-record police interactions, border dispute between China and India, Trump up in arms over books by John Bolton and niece Mary Trump
o   Trevor “poured one out” for Aunt Jemima (“Don’t worry, I put pancakes on the floor”)
o   Good bit on racism being so insidious it’s even been a tool to sell breakfast food – “Do you think Black people are less than human? Well, then you’re gonna love these flapjacks!”
o   Trevor liked the new phone shortcut but lamented its necessity – “It’s 30 years after Rodney King, and basically the only thing that’s changed is the cameras are now smarter?”
o   I laughed at the impression of Trump creating buzz over Bolton’s book by trying to block it – “No one should ever read these hot, sexy secrets! Especially on page 32!” (Side note: Trevor’s Trump impression still kills me every time)
·       Montage: Fox News guests raging about law and order in response to protests, intercut with title cards about the crimes those guests have been convicted of
·       Coronavirus – New cases in New Zealand and China, new studies on treatments/ways of spreading, rising cases in the U.S.
o   Too true – “It is crazy that 2 cases is being described as a major blow” for New Zealand, compared to how the U.S. is reacting
o   Nice analogy for Trump’s claim that “we would have very few cases” if we just stopped testing for them – “The same way if Black people stop recording the cops, we would have zero cases of police brutality”
o   I loved the line, “Trump thinks of coronavirus as a PR issue and not a pandemic”
·       Interview – Human Rights Campaign president Alphonso David
o   David described the recent Supreme Court victory protecting LGBTQ folks from workplace discrimination as “a reaffirmation of the rule of law”
o   I liked Trevor’s point about how laws protecting Black people (like the Civil Rights Act) can then be expanded to include other marginalized groups, showing why it’s important for different communities to support one another
·       Interview – NFL player Matt Ryan
o   Ryan was eager to do his part to promote racial justice, making sure to educate himself as a white person on how to do so – i.e., listening to his teammates saying that private/personal support wasn’t enough, talking with Black community leaders in Atlanta about where donations were most needed
o   Nice observation from Trevor on the argument over whether politics belongs in sports – “When politics can no longer be looked away from, sports often becomes the platform for politics”

Thursday, June 18
·       Headlines – The Supreme Court blocks Trump’s dissolution of DACA, John Bolton’s tell-all book
o   And for the latest installment of “Trump makes everything about him…” – “The Supreme isn’t supposed to like you, they’re supposed to like the Constitution!”
o   I loved this description of John Bolton – “As Republican as an assault rifle giving a lecture on trickledown economics”
o   Trevor had a great reaction to the news that Trump thought Finland was part of Russia (“sweet lord…”) – “I don’t expect much from Trump, but if he doesn’t even know the white countries, what chance does Papua New Guinea have?”
·       Correspondent piece (Dulcé) – Juneteenth
o   As Trevor said, no one was surprised by Trump’s claim that “no one around him” knew about Juneteenth – “Mike Pence doesn’t even know what a cayenne pepper is. You think he knows Black history?”
o   Dulcé dropped plenty of knowledge in her segment, from why Texas was “Blacker than a family reunion in Wakanda” in June of 1865 to the reminder that there were slaves in the Union as well – “Imagine living in New Jersey and being a slave? That’s one Civil Rights violation on top of another”
·       Interview – Author/activist Kimberley Jones
o   Jones and Trevor discussed her recent viral video during the protests, which was an attempt to recenter a conversation that had quickly become more about looting than protesting
o   She emphasized that, while Black people being murdered by the police is obviously horrific, another part of the conversation should be the “daily indignities at the hands of the police” experienced in Black neighborhoods – “It’s like this bully that lives in our community that no one else sees”
o   Looking at Rayshard Brooks, Jones noted what it took for an officer to draw his gun amid the current powder keg over police violence, “how much there is a lack of concern for the Black form”
·       Interview – Rapper/mogul LL Cool J
o   LL Cool J is working to celebrate and uplift pioneers in hip-hop culture, the “Bob Dylans” of the genre
o   Discussing Black Lives Matter, he described the aims of the movement as “the first principles of hip-hop,” bringing up classic artists like NWA
o   He didn’t have any time for people trying to stay neutral right now to avoid offense – “This is one of those moments where you gotta choose sides”

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